While the strategy of application-aware storage isn't new  many of today's storage silos were built with the view that different systems demand different storage  pundits view application-specific offerings as improving that traditional approach.

"This is a way to prioritize what has to be stored and customize the storage effort and good stuff in that way," said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "EMC is fencing off the flash for Oracle, and HP's approach is useful as well as it all enhances the traditional approach."

Peters gave a thumbs up to the approach of addressing an enterprise's specific storage needs. "You're improving on the old way," Peters said, though he added it's not the perfect solution.

That's because the downside is that some other application is going to have to take a back seat if Oracle data is viewed as most critical in terms of resources.

"The storage system has the smarts to serve what's needed, but the best possible approach would be providing more flexibility to provide that performance to another application if necessary," said Peters. "A more refined and accurate way to respond to application storage needs would be to provide more flexibility."

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According to HP, its new system can enhance storage consolidation, which reduces operational costs and complexity.

"SMB customers continue to search for affordable, easy-to-use integrated systems that simplify maintenance and management of their business applications," Andrew Manners, HP StorageWorks director of business development, said in a statement. Users can expand the storage environment by adding BladeSystem c3000 enclosures, ProLiant Servers, external iSCSI devices or additional storage to clustered environments.

The system's management console lets IT maintain clusters as a single system, which makes it easier and less time consuming for tasks such as scheduling backups and data replication tasks, according to HP.

EMC's system advances the vendor's solid state flash drive (SSD) focus initiated earlier this year when it added SSDs to its high-end Symmetrix DMX-4 storage systems. EMC said its new Oracle flash drive technology provides much faster data response than hard disk drives.

"It is ideal for Oracle Database 11g and Oracle RAC 11g application environments that require the fastest retrieval and storing of data," Barbara Robidoux, vice president of storage product marketing at EMC, stated in a release. For example, Oracle environments can use a single EFD to achieve performance that would have previously required dozens of traditional Fibre Channel drives, according to EMC.

Also this week, Pillar Data Systems  funded by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison  announced its own application-aware Oracle storage offering. And Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and EMC partnered on the Oracle
Optimized Warehouse for Dell and EMC, built on Dell's PowerEdge servers and the new EMC Clariion.

And Oracle itself announced its first foray into hardware, with the HP Oracle Database Machine.